'Bin Laden's right-hand man' freed by British court

Date: November 13 2012

Janet Stobart

LONDON: A radical Muslim preacher who praised the September 11, 2001 attacks and preached terrorist violence against Christians and Jews has won his final appeal against a British government deportation order.

The judgment was a severe blow to the Home Secretary, Theresa May, who has long sought Abu Qatada's deportation to face trial in Jordan, where he is wanted on terrorism charges.

The government's loss was compounded by the decision of Judge John Mitting, head of the Immigration Appeals Court where Qatada's final appeal was heard, that the cleric be released on bail on Tuesday — albeit under severe restrictions on his contacts with the outside world and a 16-hour-a-day curfew.

Described by one judge as Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe and labelled by the British government as a serious threat to national security, the Jordanian cleric, whose birth name is Omar Mahmoud Mohammed Othman, has spent most of the past decade in and out of high-security jails in Britain. He has faced allegations of disseminating terrorism and violence through speeches and videos, some of which were found in the apartments of the September 11 terrorists.

He has been detained under Britain's anti-terrorism laws but never charged with a criminal offence. His constant appeals against deportation to Jordan have gone from the British High Court to the European Court of Human Rights and back to the Special Immigration Appeals court in London.

His defence team argues that in Jordan he would face a trial based on evidence extracted by torture and his treatment there would violate his human rights.

Home Office teams have obtained assurances from the Jordanian government that Qatada would face a retrial under rules that discounted former torture-based evidence from two witnesses and no longer admitted torture-based evidence. However, Mitting's ruling stated: "The Secretary of State has not satisfied us that, on retrial, there is no real risk that the impugned statements of Abu Hawsher and Al-Hamasher would be admitted probatively against the appellant."

The court's final judgment decided that "until and unless a change is made to the (Jordanian) Code of Criminal Procedure ... and/or that it is for the prosecutor to prove to a high standard that the statements were not procured by torture, that real risk will remain."

May told Parliament later on Monday that the government would appeal.

"The government strongly disagrees with this ruling; Qatada is a dangerous man, a suspected terrorist who is accused of serious crimes in his home country of Jordan," she said.

In a brief statement aired on the BBC, Qatada's defence lawyer, Gareth Peirce, said she realised it was a difficult case but "the time has come in the conflict of the world for us to talk to each other ... and enter into dialogue".

Ben Ward, deputy from Human Rights Watch's Europe division, told the BBC: "It's now time for the government to put him on trial here (in Britain) or to release him without charge."

His group did not consider assurances from Jordanians "worth the paper they're written on. They may be given in good faith, but the fact is that torture evidence is still routinely used in Jordanian courts."

Los Angeles Times

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